Night Book Review

By: Wiesel, Elie

Hill and Wang, 2006.

A fictional story, guided by Elie Wiesel's real experiences. Elie's family is Jewish and is taken from their home and taken to a concentration camp. He is separated from his mother and sister; his father remains with him thought this entire story. You experience the horrific conditions, the fear, the sadness and incredible will power of Elie. He remains strong through all of the inhumane treatment, through watching people die as they lie right next to him. Elie survives all of this, and is able to share his story.

A video summary of Night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtQU88KvUK0

Awards:

Although Night has not received any awards, Elie Wiesel has received:

Nobel Peace Prize, 1986

and was chosen for Oprah's Book Club

Reviews: Recorded Books (Recorded Books, LLC.)For his lifelong work of speaking out as a Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel was awarded both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Congressional Medal of Honor. Night is this revered author’s best known work, and the first book of a trilogy which also includes Dawn (RBI# 93114) and The Accident (RBI# 93201). A worldwide best-seller and enduring classic of Holocaust literature, Night offers a personal and unforgettable account of the appalling horrors of Hitler’s reign of terror. Through the eyes of 14-year-old Eliezer, we behold the tragic fate of the Jews from the little town of Sighet. Even as they are stuffed into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, the townspeople refuse to believe rumors of anti-Semitic atrocities. Not until they are marched toward the blazing crematory at the camp’s “reception center” does the terrible truth sink in. George Guidall intensifies the emotional impact as blind hope turns to utter horror. His performance captures the profound agony of young Eliezer as he witnesses the suffering and death of his family and loses all that he holds sacred.

Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) VNU Business Media, Inc.Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of ... More Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience—of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald—his father's corpse is already cold—let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended—to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Other Books by Elie Wiesel:

The Fifth Son (Summit 1985)
Against Silence (Holocaust Library 1985)

Dawn (Hill and Wang 1961; 2006)

Day, previously titled "The Accident" (Hill and Wang 1962; 2006)

Teacher Guide:

This book is could be read in its entirety with older students. The intense nature of the inhumanity, and story line would make it difficult for younger grades. However, portions and excerpts could be used. Themes from this novel that I found were: war, family bounds, determination, holocaust history, and survival.

This is a guide that I found that helps in teaching this novel.

http://media.us.macmillan.com/teachersguides/9780374500016TG.pdf